Raintree County (107 page)

—Why don't you sons-a-bitches go off and play somewheres else? You're preventin' us from gittin' our beauty rest.

—You a-goin' to git a good long beauty rest, Yank, the cheery voice said.

—Hell, yes, said one of the other Rebels.

The firing began again. For a while the three Rebels yelled back and forth, and Fred, the cheery one, and Flash carried on a conversation.

—Say, Yank, you shaved that one pretty close. Now that ain't friendly.

—Say, Reb, I heard a lot about Southern hospitality. Is this a sample?

—Say, Yank, you got any coffee?

—Sure. Come and git yourself some.

—Not jest now. Little later, I'll he'p myself freely.

Then there was a while when no one talked. The Rebels fired savagely, but it was hard to get a good clean shot in the woods.

Once Flash said,

—Listen, Jack. These bastards are goin' to git tired a this after a while. One of 'em'll go back and git some more.

There was obviously no answer to this remark. A long period of silence followed, during which Flash didn't say anything and no one fired. It began to grow dark.

—Yank!

Johnny waited for Flash to say something, but Flash didn't talk.

—Listen, we got he'p comin' up, the Rebel said. You fit a good fight. How about surrenderin' to us?

Johnny waited to see what Flash would say, but Flash was silent.

—This yo' last offer, the voice said. Hit's a good chance. You fought brave. But with reinforcements we'll rush yuh, and if we have to do that, we don't aim to take no prisoners.

—That's right, Yank!

Johnny waited, but Flash didn't say anything. He was lying on his face.

—We won't kill yuh, Yank, the cheery voice said. Word of honor. The word of a Virginia gentleman. Captain Frederick Claymore Jackson.

Johnny pulled himself around so as to look at Flash.

—How about it, Flash? he said in a low voice.

There was no answer. Flash might be dead. It was one against three, a clear case for surrender.

Nevertheless, Johnny couldn't get himself to surrender. It wasn't courage. It was sheer instinct to survive. He didn't trust the word of Frederick Claymore Jackson, a Virginia gentleman.

He lay and listened. It was getting darker all the time. For several minutes there had been a sound of trampling horses, distant voices, an occasional shot west along the river. He waited, listening.

—How about it, Yank? Are y'all gonna come, or are we gonna come and git yuh?

Johnny didn't answer. He rubbed off his sight and waited. He could hear a sound of many horses down by the river. The voices grew louder. They were singing. For a moment the rhythm wasn't clear. Then he knew what it was.

—. . . rally round the flag, boys,

Rally once again,

Shouting the battle cry of . . .

—Comrades! Johnny yelled at the top of his lungs. Help! Help!

Flash Perkins stirred and started to sit up. He didn't seem to know where he was. His head was above the parapet of stones. Johnny pushed him flat just as a shot went over.

—All right, boys, said the cheery voice of Captain Frederick Claymore Jackson, le's git the hell out a here. That there's Union horse.

The three Rebels ran off through the brush, making for their horses. The sound of hooves on the near-by road became a little louder and then began to wane. Johnny went on yelling, but apparently no one heard him.

He stopped calling and sat up. He peered cautiously around. The Rebels were really gone. He could hear them riding off through the field.

Flash was lying on his face as Johnny leaned over him.

—Flash! Listen! We're safe, boy.

There was a strong wind blowing in high branches, but here on the forest floor the air was quiet and cool and already full of darkness. In spite of the stiff shoulder, Johnny raised Flash and managed to turn him over on his back. Flash's eyes were closed, but his mouth was open. He was breathing. Johnny put the canteen to the open lips, but the water only spilled down Flash's beard and over his bloody shirt. Johnny wet his hand and passed it over his comrade's forehead. He did this for several minutes. Then he heard Flash mumbling something. He bent down. Flash's eyes were open. They had a set glare.

—Flash, it's me—Johnny.

Flash stared like a sleepwalker. He took deeper and deeper breaths as if he were on the point of saying something. At last he said,

—Listen, they're startin' up. Indynaplis, Greenfield, Beardstown, Freehaven. You hear that, don't you?

—Sure, I hear it.

—Hear that whistle!

Flash was trying to get up. He had Johnny by the shirt. His powerful hands shook Johnny so hard that he cried out with the pain in his shoulder.

—Sure, sure. Take it easy, Flash. Just lie down and take it easy.

Waterstreaks through the powder-black on Flash's face were dead-white. But his voice was harsh and strong.

—We're goin' home, boy, he said, fiercely nodding his head as if trying to convince someone doubting.

—Sure we are, Johnny said.

Flash searched Johnny's face with bloodshot, staring eyes.

—No use worryin', boy, Flash said. Hell, you ran a good race. Hell's fire, it ain't no disgrace to git beat. Hell, I ain't been beat in five years.

Flash's mouth remained open. His eyes dilated. He gave a hoarse cry, as if something strong and masterless in him had just felt the wound for the first time. His hold on Johnny's shoulders let go suddenly, and he fell back, holding his chest and groaning. His eyes rolled. He panted like a runner who had just finished his race. He clutched at his throat coughing, choking.

—I—can't—breathe! Goddammit! Let go my throat, you bastards!

—Flash! It's me—Johnny!

There was a faint red light in the forest. Johnny could see Flash plainly now. He was gurgling and twisting in spasms. Suddenly, Johnny realized that Flash was laughing. He listened to this terrible laughter coming from the big shattered breast.

—Come on, you bastards! Flash yelled. Where I come from—

He went on panting and laughing. His forehead made ridges.

—Git a hat! he yelled. Go on, git a hat! Let's see the color of your coin! Hell, where I come from—

He coughed, his forehead was ridged, his eyes glared savage and exultant.

—Hell, I can lick any man here! I can outrun any man in Raintree County! Hell, where I come from——Where I come from, why, hell, where I come from——

He coughed for nearly five minutes, blood gushed from his mouth, he rolled back and forth. Johnny clung with one good arm under his comrade's shoulders. Here, surely, was the strongest life that ever lived, and it was dying, it was beating itself out in blood and fury.

There was nothing good about the way Flash Perkins died in a forest near Columbia, South Carolina. He died choking with his throat full of blood, still trying to beat some unseen competitor who was too much for him.

But at last the big thing that lashed him to fury was still. When it was over, Flash Perkins lay on his back, mouth open, blood blackening
on his beard and lips, toes turned out, shoulders slightly hunched, chin thrust up in that terrible repose that sleep couldn't counterfeit. Johnny had seen a lot of men lying like that in two years. He sat trying to accept the immense stillness of this form that lay in an alien forest far from Raintree County.

There was a peculiar red light under the trees as Corporal Johnny Shawnessy managed somehow with his one good arm, his feet, and his gun barrel to scoop out a shallow grave in the riflepit. Over the body of his comrade, he piled leaves, dirt, and the stones of the makeshift barrier. On a tree near-by, he carved with his knife the words

Flash Perkins,
Feb. 17,'65
A Union Soldier

Later, he was walking down through the woods along the river, trying to find a road and open ground. He saw now that the red light in the forest came from a big fire east. Later still, he was on a road choked with Union troops. A city was burning in the night. He was half out of his head with the pain in his shoulder. He lay down once in a ditch by the road and rested. Then he got up and went on toward the flames.

Later still, he was entering the town. Troops were singing ironically:

—O, Columbia, the gem of the ocean . . .

In the glare of the fire was the same building that he and Flash had seen at a great distance in the afternoon.

—That there's the State House, someone said. They never finished building it.

Union soldiers were halfheartedly trying to extinguish flames in a little tangle of worksheds in the yard of the capitol building. The fire roared on ravenous through the sheds. Inside, fragments of pediments, capitals, friezes, meant to complete the building, were chunks of incandescence.

The air was thick with flakes of flame that softly dropped as if the sky rained fire.

—It's cotton, men said.

Johnny kept asking for his unit. Finally, an officer was holding him by the arm.

—Say, son, you're wounded. Better get to a surgeon.

Later, he woke up somewhere in a tent, crying out with pain. A surgeon was working over him, washing out the wound in his shoulder.

—What about it, Doc?

—You're all right, the surgeon said. It got a piece of the bone. You've got to be quiet. You've got a touch of fever.

—What about the fire?

—O, that! the surgeon said. It was a good one, wasn't it?

Johnny knew then that the War was over for him. He sank back into fever and dull pain. For days and nights thereafter be lay, dreaming of Raintree County, seeing the earth of it ravaged and dry as if the source of its life had been scorched to a trickle. When the Army made contact with the Navy again, he was shipped with other sick and wounded up the coast and left in a hospital in Washington.

But what happened to Corporal Johnny Shawnessy was only a contemptibly minor incident in the progress of Sherman's Army north from Savannah in the spring of 1865. And as the army that had marched from Atlanta to the Sea cut a path of flame through the state where the War had started, men saw that the gods were tiring of this lengthy game of murder. Like bored children, they began

TO SMASH AND SCATTER THE PIECES
IN WANTON VIOLENCE
AT

THE END
of the Grand Patriotic Program was nearing. The Perfessor slept on, his face relaxing from its look of pert cynicism. His sharp chin rested on his breast, his glittering eyes were shut, his face was childlike and almost tender. As the drums and bugles of the band assaulted his sleeping ears, he faintly moved his lips.

With a start Mr. Shawnessy realized that Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles had once been young in Raintree County.

For thirty years and more the Perfessor had been a wanderer. Now perhaps in sleep he remembered a home. So also did the heart of Mr. John Wickliff Shawnessy yearn for the home of his youth, remembering road and river, a tree that stood by a house, a rock, and the scent of clover. A jocund music smote him almost to tears.

I wish I was in de land ob cotton,

Old times dar am not forgotten;

Look away, look away! look away!

Dixie Land.

Americans, the eternal children of humanity! Rootless wanderers, creators of new cities, conquerors of deserts and forests, voyagers on rivers, migrants to westward, they kept eternally in their hearts the fact or fiction of the childhood home.

Let each remember the face of the earth as it was in his childhood—mystical, brooding, and maternal. Let South remember South, let North remember North, let each remember the Republic. O, wandering one, far from the childhood rivers, o, soldier far from home, do not try to solve the riddle of Raintree County. Do not try to push back beyond the antiquity of the Republic's memories. Do not seek beyond the Old Kentucky Home. Do not try to rediscover the lost source of the river of mankind. Let these inquiries cease. Sleep, inquisitive explorer, sleep and dream of your home in Indiana, the mythical America that is called Raintree County, the map that is like a face or a human form and that is written upon with the unconscious penmanship of the dreamers who came from the Great Swamp, never, we trust, to go back in again.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. . . .

Now we have reached the penultimate ring in the greatest monument ever erected to the private soldier. The prize we sought, in the guise of a woman thirty-eight feet tall and holding aloft a torch, is near.

And I will show comrades together for the last time at the end of their marching, young men holding aloft victorious banners. Forever, they shall approach the Reviewing Stand. Forever an unheard music shall be sounding, stone bugles of the Republic, stone drums of triumph and thudding exultation.

River of stone forms pressing forward between walls of stone on a stone street!

But a voice tells me that the tides of the Republic will beat at the base of this column, men will grow old and die, generations of lovers will walk beside the river, men will forget, and the words on this shaft will be meaningless words: Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Resaca, Pine Mountain, Kenesaw Mountain, New Hope Church, Peach-Tree Creek, Atlanta. People will already have forgotten before dirt falls on the face of the last incredibly old comrade of the Grand Army.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:

As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.

There is an Army marching on Pennsylvania Avenue, strong lads and many. Let it always be there and marching. Let it be composed also of those who fell in the first battles, who never saw the Enemy, who died in prison pen or fever camp, let it be composed of the hundreds of thousands who never reached the top of the column, the ultimate ring, for those who never went home to Raintree County.